A San Francisco nightclub installed on Monday what it's promoting as the city's first vertical garden. Several plant-filled boxes turned on their sides and bolted outside near the entrance are the first step in the Zen Compound's plans to cover the facade of the building in greenery.

"The hope is to have a living building," said Mike Zuckerman, director of sustainability at the 40,000 square foot complex. He spotted a butterfly hovering near native licorice ferns on Tuesday.

Green rooftops are in vogue in cities around the country. Hanging, wall-mounted gardens, on the other … Read more

The writers strike might have put the kibosh on many sitcoms and dramas, but reality shows are still going strong. January 3 will see the return of Donald Trump's entrepreneurial reality show The Apprentice in the form of The Celebrity Apprentice. This time the apprentices are celebrities vying for a quarter million dollars to donate to their favorite charity.

Of course, that isn't the big news in this technology-focused blog. This time Kodak is going to be a company for one of the episodes, when contestants will work on producing and marketing a Kodak printing station in New … Read more

For those interested in checking whether their favorite professional baseball player is a cheat, Major League Baseball has posted a report on steroid use among current and former players.

The 304-page report can be found at mlb.com/mitchrpt.pdf (PDF). The document is the result of an investigation conducted by former Senator George Mitchell, who is scheduled to hold a press conference this morning.

MLB executives hired Mitchell in 2006.

Mitchell rounded up the usual suspects in his report, such as Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Gary Sheffield, and the brothers, Jason and Jeremy Giambi. But among the surprise players … Read more

An extended outage at RealNetworks' Rhapsody music service has locked out an unknown number of users for the second time since March.

While the earlier problem prevented some customers from accessing the site for up to two weeks, this time executives don't know when the problem will be corrected. A handful of Rhapsody users complained on the company's message boards this week that they haven't been able to log on since Friday.

"It's a known issue," said Justine Navaja, a company spokesperson. "We don't know yet when it will be fixed, but … Read more

I'm holding a ticket to Baghdad in my hand. I just booked the flight at a kiosk in a storefront travel agency in San Francisco's hipster heart, the Mission District.

From speakers in the room, a woman's soothing voice calls out some of the highlights there, like restaurants that are never crowded. Televisions spell out more urgent tips for travelers: "No skirts. No photos. No children."

Brochures in English, Spanish, and Arabic provide more details: "All the beautiful places that you might have read about have either been destroyed or looted."

The boarding … Read more

To use the worst of bad plays on words, YouTube has thrown itself into the Ocean: Youth-oriented mobile carrier Helio announced Wednesday that it has souped up the YouTube video offerings for its Ocean handset.

Owners of the double-keyboard smartphone are now able to upload videos to the Google-owned service more easily, fill in various criteria for them (privacy settings, tags, descriptions, categories) and "geotag" them thanks to the handset's GPS capability. Additionally, the Ocean YouTube application facilitates access to some of the social-networking features previously unavailable to most mobile versions of YouTube--rating, commenting, and access to … Read more

Rhapsody, the subscription music service owned by RealNetworks, has teamed up with music blog network and social networking site Mog.com to provide, well, music.

Through this partnership, songs mentioned on Mog's blogs are accompanied by a yellow "play" button that allows users to access the full-length streaming file through Rhapsody, which offers a total of about 4.5 million independent and major-label songs in its catalog. "We couldn't be more excited to have Rhapsody enabling music listening on MOG," Mog founder and CEO David Hyman said in a joint press release. "With … Read more

One of the recording industry's most daring experiments ended on Monday. Three months after Radiohead stunned the music industry by allowing fans to pay whatever they wanted for the album, In Rainbows, the band has now opted for a more traditional sales approach.

That was fast.

Just weeks ago, the group was being congratulated for laying the groundwork for a new business model that pundits said could one day save the music industry. But as Radiohead prepares to distribute songs the old-fashion way--selling CDs out of retail stores--not everybody is cheering.

Nicky Wire, a member of the Manic Street … Read more

I just saw the newest release of the classic noir sci-fi film Blade Runner, subtitled "The Final Cut". Undoubtedly it is the best version so far, surpassing the various other cuts that have come out over the 25 years since it was first released. I found that it raised new questions about identity in this MySpace world.

Like every designer nerd, I've seen Blade Runner at least a dozen times, a couple of times on the big screen. This Final Cut has been digitally retouched from a 70mm print and both the visuals and sound are stunning. … Read more